Another Earth

Filmmakers Mike Cahill and Brit Marling are coming out with a new film soon. Here is a review of their previous collaboration, Another Earth.

Rhoda (Brit Marling) is a young woman about to attend MIT to study astrophysics. One night she parties too hard and drives home drunk, hearing on the radio of the new discovery of a second planet Earth that is identical to our own. Gazing up to see the planet, she hits another car where John (William Mapother) is injured and his wife and son are killed.

The story moves forward to several years later, when Rhoda exits from prison after her crime. She no longer has a drive to pursue her studies and wants to pull back from the world. Although she is highly intelligent and passionate about her love of astronomy, she gets a job away from most of society by becoming a school janitor.

Her guilt moves her to spy a little on John, a classical musician and composer who has also retreated from society, now pretty much a hermit in an isolated house, having abandoned his music career. Circumstances happen where Rhoda and John meet, and since she was a protected minor at the time of the crime he has no knowledge of who she is and they begin at first an employer/employee relationship, then somewhat friends, then something beyond that.

Meanwhile, an Australian company is offering a contest for a space trip to Earth 2, and Rhoda hopes to win the trip to confront her other self to see if she also made the same mistakes in her life.

The story has to confront, or let Rhoda and John confront, the moment when Rhoda has to own up to who she is and what she did to John, and of course, the unknown situation on Earth 2, if they are the same as what is taking place here.


At the time this film was made, Marling was a fairly unknown actress who had two films in Sundance (both of which she co-wrote and co-starred in), and subsequently she has gotten a lot of buzz. Another Earth has a slight sci-fi concept but you really don't need to like sci fi to enjoy it, as it is more about redemption and second chances.

I think this story is quite an astute analysis of human complexities, and a compassionate script from such young filmmakers. I am not letting on to all the layers that the film has. There is also a blind janitor who works with Rhoda and she finds out things about him that she can relate to her own situation. The ideas about the second Earth are also varied as to how the audience interprets it. During Q&A an audience member suggested one ending whereas I thought of another, so it really is left open enough for the audience to interpret to their own tastes.

Although some of the audience tittered or scoffed at some of the events of the film, I thought they perhaps were just not attuned to the subtleties of the emotions Rhoda and John were going through, and not open to the ideas of the film. There is very little in this film I would change, I think it is one to recommend and the filmmakers ones to keep an eye on.